As I mentioned in my last post, I decided to give FlyLady another try. Today I did Babystep 1, Shine Your Sink.
I felt ridiculous.
I'm not gonna lie, with so many other things on my plate, so many other chores and tasks waiting for me, it seemed so silly to spend so much time & energy cleaning out my kitchen sink. I seriously considered skipping this step altogether and going to the second day even, except for two things:
#1 - I kept reminding myself that my own methods have not worked in the past. She is arguably an expert in the field, and has thousands of people who swear by her methods. But I did have to tell myself this multiple times throughout the day.
#2 - something she says on her site. She talks briefly about why such a seemingly small task is first, and part of it is about how if you are coming to her it's because you have struggled with your home probably for years and that means you are probably very beaten down and you need a small victory. And you see, the night before I had laid in bed and cried - no... sobbed - to Jason about how much I felt like a failure because I couldn't do it. I beat myself up daily over it. I feel like a failure as a wife & mother over it. And have for years. I am completely beaten down by the state of my home. She's right. She knows what she's talking about.
And so I did it. My kitchen sink has probably never been cleaner. Maybe not even when we installed it, LOL.
And while it wasn't the only chore I did today, the time I spent doing that, combined with a extra-whiny Jillian, meant that I got a lot less accomplished than I would have liked.
But I'm going to trust the process. I'm asking my husband to trust the process. He knows all too well that my own methods haven't worked either, so I'm asking him to please support me in trying this new way of doing things, even if they don't always make sense to either of us. Because something has to change.
I'm hoping this works. I need this to work. I probably won't post about my progress every day, but I will try to keep you updated on how it goes.
As always, thanks for checking in!
2 comments:
Good luck!
I'm sure you don't have much time for reading blogs, but one I've enjoyed a lot is A Slob Comes Clean (http://www.aslobcomesclean.com/). She is a self-described FlyLady dropout who finally got her house in order (so to speak) a few years ago, although she continues to struggle (and posts pretty honestly about that).
You can do it! While I don't follow FlyLady specifically, I've found it incredibly helpful to be able to set one small goal, then completely ignore the rest of the mess while accomplishing that one small goal. I have a list of small tasks that result in a clean kitchen, and my goal is to try to get one place farther in the list each day. Inevitably a few days goes by with very little cleaning because of family events, so I just start over when we have the next normal day.
For example, this morning, I loaded the dishwasher and handwashed stuff, but didn't wipe down the counter. After lunch I'm going to try to clear the new dishes and get the counter wiped down. One of these days, I'll get far enough down the list that my stove gets cleaned or the cabinets get wiped but for now, clean counters will be enough. Unless of course, the kids need me, in which case I'll try again after dinner.
Don't feel bad about what you haven't done yet. Feel good about what you have done.
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